Astros Player Performance Rankings - May 11, 2012

For an explanation of the methodology for these rankings go to the inaugural post of the Player Performance Rankings.

The rankings are being tweaked yet again. I'm hoping this will be our final iteration and going forward this will be the standard format. The pitching staff will be split up into starters and relievers. The starters will be ranked by average Game Score (GSC) on the season. If you want to learn more about Game Score I just did a post about the statistic Tuesday.

Relievers will be ranked by subtracting Meltdowns (MD) from Shutdowns (SD). Meltdowns and Shutdowns are a relief statistic meant to be an alternative to the Saves statistic. Here's the breakdown on how Meltdowns and Shutdowns are handed out, via FanGraphs:

Using Win Probability Added (WPA), it’s easy to tell exactly how much a specific player contributed to their team’s odds of winning on a game-by-game basis. In short, if a player increased his team’s win probability by 6% (0.06 WPA), then they get a Shutdown. If a player made his team 6% more likely to lose (-0.06), they get a Meltdown.

For the full article on Metldowns/Shutdowns check out the FanGraphs Library.

Now that we've got that out of the way lets move onto the rankings, and lets go ahead and look at the SD/MD rankings first considering that statistic is the freshest on our minds:

Hitting and fielding after the jump:

• I think Game Score and the SD/MD statistics do a better job than FIP putting in context how much the pitching staff has struggled. The rotation outside of Wandy Rodriguez has not pitched well and outside of Brett Myers and Wilton Lopez the relievers have either been a push or have more meltdowns than shutdowns.
  
• I didn't add Kyle Weiland to the starter board, because he's now on the Disabled List and easily had the worst average Game Score. And I didn't add Jordan Lyles or Anuery Rodriguez, because they've only had one start and Rodriguez (64) would of been first and Lyles (54) second or third. So for funsies I combined their Game Scores with Weiland's for the fifth rotation spot and came up with a 47.40 average Game Score out of that rotation spot. Which puts that spot ahead of both Happ and Harrell.
  
• Chris Johnson continues to climb the hitters leader-board with another strong week. His batting average on balls in play (BABIP) looks better with the homeruns he's been hitting, but it's still high at .377 and will come down, however, it appears that he may be close to average offensively. Especially, if he can continue to hit homeruns. His defense is an entirely different story as he returned to the bottom spot on the fielders board.
• I also think CJ's climb of the rankings in the last two weeks highlights how much farther we have to go before hitting statistics stabilize. A good one or two weeks can still be the difference between thinking a player a bum or praise him as a hero.
• It's certainly a small sample size and I think even Brad Mills realizes Bogusevic is the better fielder filling out a lineup with Buck in left and Bogey in right, but it's interesting that Buck has a better UZR/DRS than Bogusevic. I'd prefer Bogusevic to start, but I wouldn't be upset if we start seeing Buck getting more starts.
• I'm a bit disappointed in Jose Altuve's defensive rating, but it's still hovering around average so I'm not to worried about it.
• What are your observations?